


Oh.

by Kymopoleia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, M/M, cross posting some junk to get over 100
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:48:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10059929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymopoleia/pseuds/Kymopoleia
Summary: A Lance character study with a rarepair on the side





	

It wasn’t that Lance was stupid or unobservant or whatever. It wasn’t that Lance was a clown or that he flirted too much or that he didn’t pay attention to people. No, it was something else entirely. He had a habit of just not connecting information, and therein lay his problem.

Like, for instance, knowing that you were supposed to do homework but not understanding that the worksheet the teacher handed you was the homework. Or knowing you had to do so many things to make the simulator pass you but not know how to apply it, or knowing that you were dating a cute older guy but not realizing that meant he wouldn’t always be around. Especially when he was explicitly on the ‘going to other, fantastic places and doing science stuff’ while you were still stuck as a cargo pilot and blocked at every opportunity by an inexplicably irritating classmate.

Maybe it was just the last one that was really bothering him.

The Kerberos mission was supposed to be good. It was supposed to be a yearlong endeavor to learn about the farthest reaches of their planetary system and understand more about where they came from and what kind of things had existed in their spheres. This was supposed to be achieved through a big ice core and some soil samples, which Lance didn’t completely get but guessed made sense.

But then the ship crashed. Lance’s top secret boyfriend died. Due to pilot error by his hero, no less. Yikes.

Lance had whined and sniffled about it for a few days, but then he did what anyone else did. He buried his feelings and checked the boards for team placements and hoped Keith’s booting from the school would do something to better the situation.

Pidge Gunderson looked like a mini copy of Matt Holt, but tiny and angry and mean. Very mean little nerd.

The months passed, turned into a year, and then things changed.

Voltron, Shiro, Keith, flying lions and fighting aliens and shit hitting the fan. If Lance had anticipated any of this he would have atleast packed an extra set of clothes, or something. But no, just himself and his memories and his cluttered brain.

Lance was good at compartmentalizing and thinking of the team first. Screw Iverson and his nonsense about Lance not being able to work well with others! He worked fine, as long as people understood his need to joke and that he sometimes got distracted. His heart was in the right place and he could easily get others to look at things and see the real goals.

None of that changed what had happened, however, and even less changed when he finally, finally realized that Matt and Pidge were related. Siblings!

It was weird and a bit heartbreaking to look at her and know that the similarities weren’t imagined, that there were hints of his humor and his laugh in the girl. It was… Lance tucked his head into his arms as he thought about it, curled on his bed in the one place where he didn’t pretend the tryst hadn’t happened.

Hunk had never heard the full extent of it. They weren’t that close back then, it was way more of a casual friend than a ride or die friend. Now, obviously, they were all ride or die but… There was a certain closeness lacking. It wasn’t like Lance could tell a joke and feel like they all understood it, like he felt comfortable telling them about himself and his mistakes and his romances. They just weren’t friends like that. 

Maybe that was why he was so confused. He just wasn’t enough when he was with them. He wasn’t like he was with Matt, wasn’t easy, wasn’t loose. He was anxious and nervous and homesick, just wanting to bounce back for a day to hug his family goodbye in case he died, just one day to get his head on straight and breathe the ocean air and dig his toes into the sand and feel right again.

Finding Matt again was kind of like fulfilling that want. 

Matt had a face like a winter coat on a freezing night, like a glass of water in the desert, like a lost lover reentering the old spot. He felt like home, like relief, like things Lance couldn’t list but really wanted to because he was bad at finding the real way to say ‘I missed you’.

The first night is torture. Pidge- _Katie_ \- had been the one to find him, had carried him to safety. Informing Lance had been the bottom of the list, but he supposed it was his own fault that he’d refused to admit to her that he’d spent a few sweat soaked nights with the older boy. Katie rushed Matt to the healing pods and Lance found out by staring into the pod, shocked and sure he was dreaming.

It took Matt six agonizing days to stagger out, the last of the refugees.

Pidge caught him on his way out of the pod, Lance watched from the side and left before Matt noticed him.

It took another week before he built up the courage to check on the older man, knocking lightly on his doorframe when he was spending a rare moment away from his sister. Matt looked up from the empty space by his bed and blinked curiously, eyes not seeming to recognize him. “Yes?”

“Hey, um…” Lance swallows and taps his nails lightly against the metal. “Matt, can we talk for a second?”

Matt nodded, sitting straighter. “What’s up?”

Lance stepped in. He hadn’t had the balls to wear his normal outfit, so he’s in pajama pants and his shirt, palms sliding against the silky material of the pants where pockets should be but weren’t. “So um,” He coughs. “I know it’s been a while, and you probably didn’t really think much about it while you were um… captured… but I wanted to um. See how you were doing.”

“You know, I’m kind of getting tired of people asking me that.” Matt says slowly, as if the concept were simple and Lance were slow. His heart lodged itself in his throat and he couldn’t stand it.

“I know, I’m sorry.” He looked away. “I just… Last time I saw you, we left it at a really weird place. I thought I’d see you again, and you thought you’d be back soon, and maybe we weren’t ever on the same wavelength, and I totally understand if you don’t want to pick it up ever again but…” He looks back at Matt. “I just wanted you to know you could talk to me.”

Matt is staring at him with the same look, that exasperated non-realization and general tiredness that came with being a rescued prisoner of war. “Okay, I just need to interrupt you with something.”

“I know, I know,” Lance rushes, lifting up his hands defensively. “You are probably so sick of hearing that too. And Shiro, and Katie, they’re way better at listening because she’s your sister and she’s older than me and Shiro, well,” Lance let out a forced chuckle. “Shiro went through it too. But I-“

“Stop!” Matt held up a hand. Lance bit his lip, shaking a bit.

“I just don’t know who the hell you are.”

Oh.


End file.
